Don’t fall into the trap of measuring everything when transforming your business to digital: there are certain numbers that will tell more about your journey than others. Finding these keys will open the road to success.

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Administrative expenses

Cost saving is the ultimate argument to support a digital transformation strategy. Which executive doesn’t like to see the shrinking numbers in the budget for expenses?

One major category that is soon to provide spectacular results is that of the administrative expenses. As businesses start to digitize their operations, they necessarily automate many of the tasks and cut down on paper use, even totally eliminating them from certain workflows.

The savings on customer communication (invoices sent in emails instead of per post, announcements pushed to smartphones in notifications instead of flyers, etc.), reporting (mobile application instead of paper-based solutions) or assistance (a virtual PA instead of a human one) are tremendous.

Operating expenses

The other type of expenses that will be affected by the transformation to digital processes is that of the operating expenses.

For the makers of tangible goods, digitally controlled production, monitoring, maintenance, and distribution result in simpler, more streamlined workflows. After all, cutting on inefficiencies and down times can earn hard cash for the business. Digital processes also allow the companies to create new, innovative services that cater more to the digital customers’ needs.

For service companies, the savings come mainly from payroll: the same workforce being more productive, the same hours better distributed, the less hiring necessary. When the lines of human resources costs are in decline alongside the same or improved profitability, the business is right on track with its digitization efforts.

Sales of goods or services

There is one thing more appealing than cost savings: and that is sales figures going up. The implementation of a digital strategy, when successful, will surely steer the numbers in that direction.

The reasons? For one, the customers are more satisfied. For them, your digital strategy translates to promptly available product information, easier purchases, more payment and returning options, quicker answers to their questions through online customer service. And what do satisfied customer do? Yes, they spend more on your products.

The other reason is more technical. When the operational processes are streamlined and simplified, sales agents become more effective in their day-to-day activities. Supported by real-time data coming from the company database and instantly available on digital devices, they can have more client meetings, give better quotes, and close deals more quickly.

Employee satisfaction

At first, it might seem like the hardest to measure but, in fact, this soft metric can be translated to actual numbers if we take a closer look.

Technically, access statistics of digital corporate systems and enterprise applications will show if the employees are satisfied with the new tools and processes: if they are, they will use them without any further prompts or incentives. Just because it makes their job easier or more enjoyable. Don’t underestimate the power of satisfaction: it is a huge part of success and a proof on the return of the strategic investments. The opposite (dissatisfaction), on the other hand, cause more pain than gain for everyone.

Employee satisfaction can also be measured by looking at the retention figures. Introducing digital tools and processes, ideally, come with the advantage of people wanting to stay in their jobs. So to speak, two birds are hit with one stone, as your business becomes innovative and the employer brand stronger at no additional costs. Moreover, a lower employee turnover means lower hiring costs – a real game-changer these days.

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To make sure everyone’s on the same page about what has to be done, in what order, and what’s the intended impact from a business perspectives, organizations have been standardizing their processes for a long time. With a standard workflow, they can streamline their operations, save on downtimes, and minimize the chance of miscommunication.

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An organization can select among different options when it wants to standardize a workflow: some opt for a more detailed regulation, while others vote for more flexibility or more future-proof solutions.

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

Standard Operating Procedures, or SOP’s, have become the norm in many strictly regulated industries to standardize the execution of routine tasks by outlining in detail the steps necessary for a certain outcome. In healthcare, the military, or manufacturing, where safety and security are of utmost importance, these written documents assure the workers, the customers, and the authorities that all activities are safe and comply with the industry regulations.

An SOP ensures that the quality of the service is consistent, regardless of shift systems or management styles. It also facilitates the onboarding of new colleagues and saves on training times. SOP’s are usually established by quality assurance professionals if there are such in the organization, or by the senior management of the unit to which the SOP applies.

When introducing such a document, it is important to tell the workers that the new procedure will not only improve the business outcomes but also their ability to complete the tasks. In other words, that it is intended to make them more effective. Allow some time to familiarize with the new procedures and to eventually modify them, should such feedback come.

An SOP usually comes in the form of a text document. But, in some cases, it might be handy to create a checklist or a workflow chart, depending on the number of steps in the process. If it’s a low-key process, under 10 steps and not many decisions to make, a checklist works best. When lots of steps and decision stages are involved, a workflow chart can help overview the process at a glance and quickly identify the critical stages.

Setting milestones

Instead of a step-by-step guide as an SOP, you can choose to set only the major milestones of a work process. This way, you will have all the steps in front of you that you need to pay special attention to. Setting milestones is a good way to standardize creative processes, e.g. the design of a new website or a product, while still giving the contributors flexibility of defining the in-between steps.

Key dates, tasks, deadlines or deliverables can all be milestones if they are of higher importance than the other similar dates or tasks, they have a serious impact on the outcome of the project, or they are an explicit indicator of the successful completion of the project.

Tracking a set of tasks by milestones can be done by using different tools: simple or Gantt-type charts in spreadsheets might do just fine, but there is an abundant selection of specific apps for project management, too. Since the goal of setting milestones is to establish a standard everyone on the team follows, it is important that the selected tool be simple enough to use. This way, it can improve productivity instead of slow the process with the administration.

Unlike an SOP, a set of milestones can change from project to project, but, in order to standardize the processes, they are best established by project type. There are also types of milestones that every project entails, such as overall start and end date, the start and completion of an activity, the approval of deliverables or a review.

Mobilization

For a company that wants to be ahead of the game, mobilizing its workflows is the suitable solution. If creating standard workflows is a way to save time and money for the business, it is even more so when we talk about creating workflows with mobility.

Maybe it is not even creating something totally new, but even rethinking the existing standards of operation (a necessary part of any mobilization project) can help streamline it and make it more effective.

When mobilizing, standardization happens on many levels. First, the elements of the workflow will be defined (ideally) by end-user interviews and the common practices of the workers on a team, so necessarily free of individual preferences or non-complying routines.

Second, the end product of the development will be one application that will be used by all members of a team, so you can let the app guide the workflow by giving the same buttons, menus, action- and decision points to everyone. And if the application is easy enough to use, it will be able to break the old and ineffective routines that workers might hold onto.

You can also opt for a mobile development from specific modules that incorporate different industry best practices, as it is the case of Scolvo products. Then the workflows really become standard, promoting effectiveness and productivity.

Note that standard does not equal uniform: you should still be able to customize the enterprise mobility app to your company’s specific needs since whatever is in the app will become the standard at your organization.

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In the workplace of today, technology already takes the center stage, offering us all kinds of opportunities to improve productivity. Tomorrow’s improvements will be less visible than mobile devices appearing and paper disappearing: sensors all around us will make sure we do the most work with the fewer resources.

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What’s available today?

To some extent, every workplace is digital today and businesses are increasingly becoming digital businesses. From retail to utilities, companies are dedicating resources to digitize their operations. They’re right in that they have no more time to waste : SADA Systems’ recent survey shows 49% of the IT professional respondents said digital transformation was ‘extremely high priority’.

The workplace as we knew it has surely changed lately, in at least 4 ways:

• we mostly use digital input methods (including mobiles), trust our data mostly to digital storage and management (as paper-free processes proved to account for improved productivity),
• our communication focuses collaboration (that has no obligatory ways or channels),
• and digital output methods are almost exclusive.

The technology, the new tools businesses give to the employees, are not just necessary enablers of the new ways of working but they are also important part of the work experience that is demanded by today’s workforce.

Talent wants to feel good while working, whether it is in the workplace or on the road. So the employers are getting them devices (that have come a long way from laptops and mobile phones to smartphones, tablets, and even wearables) and equipping them with enterprise apps. Consumer and business tech are used parallel and that improves instead of hindering productivity.

As a consequence, today’s digital workplace is (at least) double-faced: in the physical office, the focus is on being social and collaborative, while remote working promotes productivity in a personalized setting.

Schedules and locations are changing for each and every employee and they become flexible as remote working has become widespread (in great part due to mobile technology). It is an undeniable trend: according to an IDC estimate, there will be 105 millions of mobile workers by 2020, at a population growth rate of 2 million per year.

What can you expect tomorrow?

The workplace of tomorrow will, therefore, not be driven by unmovable physical objects or hierarchies, but by the values individuals’ works add to the overall performance. These values have to be transparent and shared throughout the workforce to ultimately form a company culture.

Besides these value-based traits, three other characteristics will also be omnipresent in tomorrow’s workplace:

• full digitalization and the art of extracting meaningful data to create new services,
• mobile technology that adapts to people (with an even stronger focus on user experience),
• and a shift from IT to other departments in making technology decisions.

In the near future, workplaces will also become totally paperless – so businesses will need more server storage space instead of file cabinets and apps instead of more devices or departments. Technology will be needed to better organize the workforce that is not in the office and may not even be directly employed.

The human workforce will mostly be used to perform the creative or managing tasks, while the Internet of Things (IoT) takes over the repetitive tasks and the collection of data. According to BI Intelligence, there will be 34 million of connected objects globally by 2020, requiring enhanced management practices and security measures.

Despite the risks, the future is rather bright: the IoT world will again give a boost to employee productivity and operational efficiency. Intelligent buildings equipped with cameras, thermostats, and other sensors, and controlled by mobiles, will be able to optimize the environmental impact and the working conditions for people and track assets.

They will heat and light only the rooms where there are workers, assign workspaces, monitors water usage, give location-based access to services, and locate objects within the territory. IT security and physical security will work in collaboration to prevent or manage unwanted events.

Help your clients accelerate their digital transformation with mobility solutions – Join the SCOLVO partner community today!

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2016 was a year of controversion: a faster pace of growth for enterprise mobility solutions due to increasing demand from businesses and some old concerns that stayed with it.

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Since enterprise mobility is arguably a key element of the digital transformation puzzle, it’s good news that digital transformation was put high on the agenda of many business executives: SADA Systems’ recent survey shows 49% of the IT professional respondents said it was ‘extremely high priority’ and 13% thinks mobile apps are cornerstones of it.

This is supported by the fact that, despite any concerns from the part of the management, mobile workers are everywhere. According to an IDC estimate, there will be 105 millions of them by 2020, at a population growth rate of 2 million per year. Technologies to facilitate this new type of working were sure to follow.

Bring your own IoT

For hardware, the talk is not only about BYOD anymore, although it has seen the addition of a new component in the form of wearables – at least it has been reportedly outgrown pilot projects and scaled to real deployments. Meanwhile, the focus of the IT security experts had also shifted from securing the devices to securing the data.

Worrying about devices entering the game is more and more pointless, anyway, as the IoT world takes over. Connected devices are expected to more than triple in number in only five years – BI Intelligence puts it to 34 billion by 2020. Businesses are better get used to the idea that mobilizing the employees was just one of the challenges and managing the connected objects will surely be a different one.

Financial apps rule in ROI

The industries ahead of their games with excellent mobility apps are numerous, and mostly led by the influence of the IT and telecom industry, according to a new report by Transparency Market Research. The report also states, however, that returns on an investment in such applications are the biggest in the banking, financial services, and insurance sectors that will expand at a rate of 25.7% between 2015-2022.

Learn how Aegon Aegon Group, one of the world’s leading provider of life insurance, pension and asset management, with claim settlement experts of an average age 50+, managed to cut the paperwork and time it took to complete their tasks

Market shake-ups

We’ve seen a further concentrating Enterprise Mobility Management market this year. Last year’s acquisition of AirWatch has gotten the ‘largest vendor’ title for VMWare by IDC, and some analysts are already cheering a similar move from Cisco towards MobileIron.

The shaky conditions called for new CEO at Mobilelron, while Citrix, another one with a huge change in its leadership, also made the news by announcing its partnership with Microsoft in May – a move showing the growing importance of simple and familiar when it comes to implementing a new solution.

Are we user-friendly yet?

Despite the constant growth and the undeniable trust of the businesses in mobility as the way forward, some challenges are yet to be solved. Enterprise mobility projects are still struggling with the incorporation of legacy apps and prolonging battery lives, but even more importantly, reaching an optimal level of user experience.

As the eyes of executives are set to the big picture, they start to tackle business workflows and processes. And when they go this deep, dealing with user experience issues is inevitable. Apparently, getting a user interface right is able to get anyone ahead of their games, making it more attractive to the new generation entering the workforce and more easy to learn for the previous ones.

Will the Year of the Rooster be the year of your business being mobilized? Share your thoughts about the trends you’ve seen or you’re expecting to see in the comments below!

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